From infancy, most people rely on visual stimulation to learn about people and the environment. We look, interpret, evaluate, and make decisions about what we see. Countless educators have recognized that photography is a powerful teaching and learning tool, and Carla Neumann-Hinds has offered a book of tips and guidelines for using photography to help children observe and evaluate the natural world.

Digital cameras, now durable and inexpensive, offer unlimited opportunities to pose questions, create learning materials, collect and evaluate data, review information, and assess learning. Photographs make concepts and processes visible. Side-by-side pictures of plant growth, for example, stimulate children's questions, invite observations, and help scaffold learning about life cycles.

In Picture Science, sample lessons like "How do seeds grow?" "Mixing colors," "Face puzzles," and "Field guides" enrich the text. Color photographs make the lessons clear. The book gives suggestions for using photographs in charts and offers numerous examples of children using cameras to collect and analyze data, demonstrate conclusions, and make inquiry visible.

Especially valuable is the chapter on using photography to document children's developmental achievements for parents and to tell a program's story to a large community in books, presentations, and portfolios.

An appendix covering technical questions about budgets, camera styles, storage capacity, and battery life will prepare the most inexperienced teacher for the riches of picture science.

Summer 2010 Texas Child Care Journal